Valley dispatchers now able to locate 911 calls from cell phones

PALMER — By now everyone probably understands the appeal of cell phones — they’re easy to use, convenient and always nearby.

While a lot of folks like the idea of having the ability to summon help from anywhere, on the other end of that call to 911 is a big logistical hurdle that was only recently overcome:

How do you know for sure where a person is calling from?

It used to be easy. When everyone was using land lines, that information was at the tips of emergency dispatchers’ fingers. But while land lines are tied to a particular address, a cell phone could be anywhere.

“Our statistics show that we’re over 65 percent cellular phone calls coming into the 911 center,” said Dennis Brodigan, the borough’s director of emergency services. “Seven years ago that was 32 percent.”

And while cell phone calls are dominating the number of land line calls now, eventually, Brodigan said, it won’t even be a competition.

“On a national level, I heard a telephone executive say there won’t be any land line telephones in 20 years,” he said.

To be sure, he said, most people who dial 911 know where they are and can tell dispatchers. But what about the stranded tourist or the person who is too injured or too frightened to speak? Or is lost.

It’s those calls that drove the borough to implement a system to triangulate cell phone calls. The system went live at the end of last year and is now tracking down callers using all but two wireless services. Brodigan said the other two companies are very soon going to join the system, if they haven’t already.

The system, he said, uses cell phone towers to narrow down a person’s location. Up to three nearby towers can be used to triangulate the cell phone signal.

Another plus? The system can also weed out Anchorage calls that come into borough dispatch station. Which, he said, wouldn’t jump out as a problem to most folks. There are, after all, 30 road miles through sometimes sparsely populated areas between Anchorage and Mat-Su.

But the communities are closer than one would think. Downtown Anchorage is just across the Knik Arm from Point MacKenzie, for example. Sometimes Valley calls are picked up on Anchorage towers and vice versa.

Now, with the upgrade, there is a direct pipeline between Anchorage and the Valley. Anchorage can zip call information to the Valley and the Valley can return the favor.

That connectivity also gives the borough a redundancy to its system. The same call information can move quickly between the Palmer dispatch center and Wasilla’s Mat-Com center.

“If the city of Palmer system were to fail entirely, the system would shunt over to the city of Wasilla,” Brodigan said.

Of course, that would flood Wasilla with calls. But Brodigan said the protocol would be for Palmer dispatchers to hop in their cars and head up the highway to help out their colleagues on that side of the Valley.

“It would take 20 minutes,” he said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.